


you can't take the sky from (his eyes) me

by driedupwishes



Series: no power in the verse can take you from me [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Firefly Verse, Beginnings of relationship, F/F, M/M, Slow Build, hand holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 11:53:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6078345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/driedupwishes/pseuds/driedupwishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The Alliance took my brother," Mikasa had said, arms crossed over her body, shoulders stiff. "And they broke him."</p>
<p>Looking into green eyes, Levi found he couldn't agree. Eren Jaeger wasn't broken.</p>
<p>He was brilliant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you can't take the sky from (his eyes) me

He heard him coming before he came, the clatter of boots unusual but not unappreciated, considering Levi was as sore and tired and wrung through the works as he was. He shifted in the seat, slow thanks to the pain in his side, twisting round, and there he was, perched in the doorway, eyes glimmering with something like a secret curling his lips.

“Something wrong with our course,” Levi asked. His ribs ached, gorram nuisance, and he barely kept the pain out of his voice, though it was probably pointless.

“No,” Eren answered, soft and short and easy. Looked like a good night. Levi was trying not to be relieved the same way he was trying not to be pained, but Eren’s lips twitched knowingly and Levi rolled his eyes, twisting back around the console in an attempt to _not_ watch the young man’s lips curl with the shadow of a smile.

Eren wandered in his peripheral, his steps now silent that he was on deck, and Levi let him, figuring he would speak when he was good and ready. But while he moved Levi’s tired mind wandered with him, hands dead weight on the console as it blinked and hummed quietly underneath his fingertips.

(“ _When I say my brother was a genius, I mean it to a degree I don’t think you can fully grasp. Eren was brilliant. He was brilliant and leagues above anyone else I have ever met, and-“_

Mikasa had swallowed, eyes ablaze, shimmering with tears she hadn’t let fall. Levi hadn’t known what to think in the wake of the realization he was smuggling fugitives of the Alliance all accidental like. He’d only stared, glancing between her and the hunched form of the young man tucked safely in their Medical Bay, trying to figure out what in the rutting hell they were going to do now.

“ _He was brilliant,_ ” Mikasa had repeated quietly, “ _and they broke him.”_ )

“I came up here to check on you,” Eren answered, unprompted. Levi pressed his lips together to keep them from curling, ‘cause this wasn’t the time to be smiling (or something like that).

“Your sister fixed me up,” Levi answered back, the question that hadn’t been asked, the one he was happy to be pretending had been asked instead. “I’m right as can be, no need to fuss. You don’t hafta check on me.”

Eren’s eyes slid his way as he seemed to glide forward, leaning his tall body over the steps down into the belly of the deck, hands curling round the railing to keep his upper body as close to the glass windshield as it could be. The lights from the console danced across his skin, glowing mighty fierce around the edge of his jaw, making it sharp enough to cut, with an edge barely shadowed like a knife. Above him space went on, an empty expanse cold and cruel with lights that were always just outta reach.

Or at least, that was how Levi usually thought about the great big thing they flew through every day. Things had a tendency to change, however, when Eren ghosted into the picture, all lithe and tall and licking his lips round a shadow of a smile. The glory of space was no different and before Levi could put a stop to it, his mind wandered off again, drifting back a ways it hadn’t been in a long, long time, ‘cause Eren-

“No, I didn’t _hafta_ ,” Eren echoed, voice a teasing silky thing as he mimicked the way Levi fell into slang as exhaustion dragged at his bones. Levi snorted, the motion jarring the gunshot wound in his shoulder, jostling his bruised ribs, and Eren grinned, a flash of teeth white and bright with crooked lips. Levi couldn’t tear his eyes from those lips, feeling the ache in his shoulder fade from his focus as he breathed, deep and long, fingertips curling against the console’s edge.

“But I wanted to,” Eren added, half a heartbeat later.

Levi swallowed, rough, choking back a string of swears that curled his tongue against the top of his mouth as his heart did something downright _flippy_ in his chest. He hadn’t been in the business of thinking nothing was beautiful since he’d lost so much in a canyon on a planet far, _far_ from this corner of space. Despite those facts, however, Eren managed to have him dry mouthed and gorram starry-eyed like a school boy with just a grin and he ain’t even done it on _purpose_. Meanwhile Eren craned his head, pretending at least to be oblivious to Levi reeling, his green eyes sliding up to the stars, the sight of which had Levi’s chest constricting with a pain that had nothing to do with the bullet he’d taken on the job that day.

(“ _He can’t help it,”_ Mikasa always said, when Jean started snapping that Eren better get a goddamn grip on his noggin before he _removed it_. “ _They took what had been my brother and broke him; he’s doing his best! Let’s see you withstand Alliance-knows-what being rearranged in your brain and see how well you come out of it. That’s, of course, assuming you_ have _a brain, Jean.”_

Jean always went for a gun about then, snarl curling his lip like he smelled something rancid – something _other_ than his own breath, mind – and that usually set off Hanji, whose good-for-nothing cackling could be heard all the way down to Ymir and Krista’s gorram shuttle. If Krista wasn’t tucked in the goddamn engine room or curled around her retired-Companion girlfriend she was usually in the thick of it, some days defending Eren and some days staring in mute terror, seeing the things he could do in her memory like some gorram ghost story. Sometimes they were loud enough Armin even came off deck, putting Levi’s girl in auto-pilot to come see if someone was going to get shot from this argument while their preacherwoman Annie watched on, quiet but positioned at Eren’s side just in case.

It never got that far, of course. But Armin insisted he was holding the option open for the future.

“ _Everyone’s got bad days,”_ Levi always intervened eventually, since there was only so much yelling he could take before the air lock stared to look mighty alluring. “ _Yelling ain’t gonna make a bad day a better day, so why don’t we all go to our own ruttin’ corners and calm down.”_

Eren always looked at him after that, eyes full of so much Levi was inclined to think not even the great expanses of space could hold it all safely. It was a look that left him cotton mouthed for hours, left him stalking to take the reins from Armin just to clear his head, Hanji making a face at him from the side like they had something to say.)

“You know,” Eren said, shifting in place before twisting toward Levi, upper body still craned toward the stars. “You take a lot of risks for a man who swears up and down he doesn’t care about nobody or nothing that ain’t on this ship.”

Levi pursed his lips and rolls his eyes, shrugging his good shoulder despite the pain to show how very _little_ he cared about what Eren was implying. He didn’t have to tell him to stop, because Eren could read it, clear as day, across his face, probably even across his gorram _brain_ , but that didn’t stop the young man, who pushed back in a fluid motion and slid into Levi’s space like he belonged there.

“You should be more careful,” Eren said, soft and – stars _help him_ , the green eyed devil leaning over him sounded _pleading_. Levi bit his tongue on a swear that would have curled Mikasa’s goodie little two-shoes, curled his fingers against the urge to reach up and cup Eren’s face. Green eyes danced over his face in a gesture Levi could almost _feel_ , a gesture that had him shivering a little as Eren’s fingertips ghosted over his shirt, just above where the bandages covered his stitched up bullet wound.

Levi resisted the urge to acknowledge Eren’s barely-there touch, because he was either going to lean into it or shake it off, and he didn’t know which of those options would be _worse_. He ended up swallowed something fierce, his tongue flicking out to lick in his lips, an action he regretted instantly as green eyes followed the motion with a flicker of dark lashes.

“Ain’t possible,” Levi said, his voice coming out husky, words dragging with a pattern of speech he’d thought he’d buried already. “You know why?”

Eren’s eyes, darkening by the second if Levi wasn’t going moonbrained like a lovestruck fool, unfocused, his lips parting as he looked at something Levi couldn’t see. Levi let himself take a deep breath, chest just barely brushing Eren’s fingers as he did so, a sign of his own weakness covered under the pretense of buckling down for whatever shitstorm Eren was seeing in his head.

He had an idea of what it was – red hair, muffled laughter, shrapnel, explosions, darkness, mud, a bark of a swear that was overtaken in seconds by a piercing whoop of victory every time another purple-belly solider fell outta sight. Levi could see it all, muted memories inside his own head, tied inevitably to the smell of blood and gunpowder, the crackling sound of a hopeless radio in his hand, the outline of a tall, blonde commander in a neatly pressed uniform, the word surrender on his lips just as Levi lunged up and took a swing at him, leaving the imprint of his knuckles on the ruttin’ bastard’s _face_ before Hanji dragged him back.

A shudder danced down Eren’s spine, his body sagging as he blinked, tears prickling the corners of his eyes as Levi buckled and reached up to steady him, hand curling around his shoulder solidly. He knew Eren wouldn’t break, knew his head wasn’t a pretty place to take a dive into, but Eren didn’t shy away from him. He breathed, ragged but deep for a moment, leaning even further down into Levi’s space, his eyes glittering like starlight as he reached up to brush Levi’s hair away from his eyes.

“Because you’re just too pretty to die,” Eren answered, the words falling as easily from his lips as they had Levi’s, once upon a time. An old joke, told to a squad he’d buried, save for Hanji, one Eren had plucked from his head with his beautiful, wonderful, genius brain.

Levi couldn’t help but laugh, even though the movement hurt, jarring his gorram shoulder and jostling his ribs against, bruised and beaten as they were. He laughed and the sound tore at his throat, coming out raw, making him wonder when the last time he’d felt so _young_ was.

“No power in the ‘verse can keep me down with a face like this,” Levi found himself repeating, for the second time in his life, this time joking not to distract, not even whole-heartedly to comfort Eren on what he’d probably found in Levi’s head, but just- just to _tease_. Because he wanted to make Eren _laugh_.

But Eren didn’t laugh. He swallowed, eyes flickering, and when he smiled it was small and crooked, but it still hit Levi like the kickback of a gun. “Good,” Eren said quietly, hand falling from Levi’s face to instead, bafflingly, take his instead. Levi blinked, heart doing some fancy flips in his chest as he looked between their fingers as Eren purposefully tangled them together to Eren’s deceptively casual expression.

“It is, after all, a face I would really, really hate to lose,” Eren continued, or ended with really, after a moment. And though his face was composed, Levi could feel the way his fingers trembled, like a bird’s, downright _scared_ , just-

Just from the thought of losing Levi.

_Ruttin’ hell,_ Levi thought. _Annie’s going to send me to the special hell_.

“Ain’t nothing to lose, Eren,” Levi answered, the question that hadn’t been asked, the one he wasn’t going to pretend wasn’t on the table, ‘cause come hell or high water, Eren was beautiful and brilliant and incredible and funny and _not broken_. He swallowed, rough and jerky, and then squeezed Eren’s fingers in his, gently at first but more firmly when the hand in his twitched to squeeze him back.

“I’m here,” Levi whispered. “I ain’t going anywhere and neither are _you_.”

 

-

 

(Levi stalked away from ruttin’ mess of a ‘conversation’ with his crew, his boots clanking loudly on the grated floor as he threw himself down in the empty pilot’s seat and growled. A stab of a button took them off auto-pilot and he bit off a swear at the clutter Armin kept on the console, swiping at some papers and a ruttin’ _pen_ until it fell to the grates, clattering down into the engine bits with a small helpless noise. Another ruttin’ gorram day with his _lovely_ crew, it seemed to be, and with another jab at the screen next to him he pulled up the planetary listening, looking for somewhere, _anywhere_ they could land and get out of each other’s hair for a while.

It wasn’t until something creaks behind him does he realize someone had followed him. He growled, half expecting Hanji in the doorway, only to whirl around and see Eren instead, the oh so sought out topic of the earlier conversation, his tall frame tucked against the door jam with his head cocked to the side. Levi swallowed his own tongue in an effort not to swear, his own words echoing in his head, that growling and yelling at nobody ever made a day any better. He ended up watching soundlessly as Eren drifted his way him instead, eyes tracing his figure as he curled up on the edge of the console at Levi’s side. He didn’t say anything, just licked his lips and stared, silently, eyes dancing across Levi’s face like he had all the time in the verse. Levi had broken in less than a minute flat, buckled under the pressure of green eyes the way he hadn’t in a long, _long_ time.

“What,” Levi snapped, harsh and sudden despite his earlier resolve not to make things worse, his words feeling like the kickback of a gun as they left his tongue. Eren didn’t flinch, staring at him so hard his eyes seemed to slide outta focus, like he could see into Levi’s head.

“You don’t think I’m broken,” Eren murmured, leaning until he’d towered over Levi like some kind of ruttin’ giant. His eyes focused again with a blink, dark long lashes dancing against his red tinted cheek in a way that made Levi’s fingernails bite into his palm.

Levi swallowed his tongue instead of answering at first, choking and breathing in through his nose, shifting in his chair to look the green eyed genius in the face only to regret it as soon as his knees brushed Eren’s legs.

“No,” he managed, after a fashion. “If you can’t walk, you crawl, and if you can’t crawl, you find someone to carry you. And as much as your sister would like to carry you, you ain’t need such help, far as I’ve seen. Ergo, you ain’t broken.”

Eren stared at him for another handful of moments, mouth parted just enough for a hint of white to peek through, before sliding off the edge of the console and retreating to the co-pilot seat instead, unused as it was. Levi let him, shoulders coiled with a tension he couldn’t pin down and explain, before turning back to his screen, squinting at the list of planets it had brought up.

“What do you think? Paquin or Silverhold?”

Levi didn’t clear his throat to speak and his voice came out rough, thick and throaty in a way that had heat bleeding all the way down his neck. The feeling only intensified when Eren blinked, mouth falling open as he was caught off guard, the first Levi had ever seen of the emotion on his face.

“I-“ Eren stuttered slightly as he spoke, blinking and shifting, suddenly the one like a school boy. Levi’s chest did something downright complicated at the sight. “Paquin?”

This time he cleared his throat, had to if he wanted to speak, something clogging it up he wasn’t ready to address. “Paquin it is,” he muttered, twisting around to the controls, tapping the buttons and bringing the steering to life.

Eren stared at him soundlessly for the rest of the trip there, but Levi didn’t mind. Flying worked better with company, anyway.)

**Author's Note:**

> okay so disclaimer before y'all lynch me, everyone knows Mal and Inara are #inlove but listen, Levi ain't no Inara and Eren makes the _perfect_ River, though I aged him up until he's like young twenties in this (not that I mentioned that, but) and Levi's Mal, hands down. so I rearranged the crew a bit, personality wise, to write this. Levi, however, doesn't fit Mal's southern slang too well, so I kept it as close to Firefly lingo as I could without making him out of character. anyway, luv this show, couldn't help myself after watching it with the Baeb a little while ago. 
> 
> I hope you guys enjoyed! if you have any questions feel free to ask c;


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